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Portrait of a Man
Christian Friedrich Zincke (German, 1683/85–1767)
c. 1735
- Medium
- enamel on copper in a gold frame with a blue glass and hair reverse
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Framed: 5.1 x 4.3 cm (2 x 1 11/16 in.); Unframed: 4.5 x 3.6 cm (1 3/4 x 1 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- England, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- The Edward B. Greene Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The unknown sitter's shoulders are turned to the right, and he is painted almost full face. He wears a bright blue velvet coat with covered buttons, deep yellow embroidered waistcoat, and white stock collar with double lace frill down the front. His powdered wig falls to his shoulders. He has gray eyes and is clean shaven with rosy cheeks, and the background is dark brown. The miniature is set in a gold locket-style frame. The back displays a lock of dark brown hair inside a border of bright blue foiled glass—a popular framing style for miniatures in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and, therefore, surely a later addition.
Since the publication of the Greene collection catalogue in 1951, the attribution of this miniature has been disputed, with experts alternately suggesting Christian Friedrich Zincke and possibly Charles Boit (1663–1727). The evidence in favor of Zincke, however, is far stronger than it is for Boit, who had not worked in England for over a decade before his death in 1727, several years before the most plausible date for this portrait. Among Zincke’s hallmarks are lips painted two different colors—here, purplish pink on top and orange on the…
